from a nonconstantian and postmodern perspective

Category: pop culture

I am writing this to be read on Friday, April 13th. We’ll have another Friday the 13th in July of this year.

What do you think about Friday the 13th? The Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina estimated in 2012 that between 17 and 21 million Americans struggle to some degree or other with stress related to Friday the 13th. The same group estimates that people changing their behavior because of Friday the 13th costs between $800 and $900 million in business.

Symptoms range from mild anxiety to full-on panic attacks.
And, of course, a new movie in the Friday the 13th series debuts nearly every time one occurs.

Though many connect anxiety related to Friday the 13th to Jesus plus his 12 disciples making 13, there is no historical evidence of the day actually causing anxiety before the 19th century.

While I don’t suffer stress related to this particular day, I have to admit I have some of my own superstitions. For example, though I know Jesus tells us that God makes the rain fall on the just and unjust, I still sometimes imagine God as trying to send me messages through difficulty or trial.

All of which reminds me of a phrase I learned when I served in small-town churches. The phrase was “don’t borrow worry.”

In teaching the disciples (and everyone else in the crowd that day) not to worry, but, rather, to seek God first. Peter advises us all to, “Throw all your anxiety onto him [Jesus], because he cares about you.” (1 Peter 5:7)

So, if you are anxious today, or any day, take a deep breath. Hold it for a 5 count, and release it slowly. Do it again. As you breathe slowly, try a breath prayer.

Call this burying the lead, but this post is, if you haven’t already caught on, inspired by the reports that the tickets for tonight’s State of the Union included a misspelling. “Union” was spelled “Uniom.”

And, of course, this mistake exploded around social media and late night comedy.

Which, likely, has some people feeling defensive for the President.

I feel for everyone here; I enjoy getting laughs at things I post, and sometimes those laughs are at someone else’s expense.

But here’s the deal: the real problem, as I see it, is neither the type nor the jabs for laughter’s sake. No, the real problem is that many of us are more than willing to laugh – we share, forward, retweet, when “the other side” slips up, but we get all bent out of shape when someone we support is the object of any ridicule or humor.

Maybe it is ok to enjoy a laugh about a mistake made by someone you don’t like or respect. But if it’s ok for you, try not to get bent out of shape when someone else is laughing at someone you like and respect.

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I don’t know if this is true, but rumor had it, when I was a college student, federal regulations said you couldn’t call something a hamburger that wasn’t pure beef.

You couldn’t just google it back then.

We began to wonder when the campus dining hall would post the day’s menu with things like “beef patty on bun.”

What’s the difference between a “hamburger” and a “beef patty on bun”?

We weren’t sure, so we figured naming rights were somehow involved. You couldn’t call it a hamburger unless it was all hanburger. Sure, “beef patty on bun” implies some beef, but that word “patty” leaves a lot of wiggle room.

Like, I learned this week, peanut butter has to be a minimum of 90% actual peanuts. That’s why, you’ll notice, there are jars of product on the shelves in the “peanut butter” section of your grocery store that say “peanut butter spread.” “Spread” is the wiggle room.

And, you probably knew this, but Pringles are not actually potato chips. They are less than 50% potato! And I don’t know about you, but I’ll probably go on eating pringles, even though I know this!

I think we’d all agree, wouldn’t we, that transparency is important.

When Jif Peanut butter first entered the market, they didn’t want to have to admit to the public – to peanut butter buyers, that it was 20% crisco, but I’d want to know if what I thought was peanut butter was ⅕ crisco!

Jiff has long since raised their peanut butter content to at least 90% peanuts. So don’t worry.

What’s in a name?

In Bible times, names had significance.”Israel” means “to struggle with God and men and win.” “Jesus” means “Yahweh is salvation,” and is the same name in Hebrew as Joshua – in the bible we get one directly from Hebrew, the other through the Greek.

The name “John” comes from Hebrew for “Yahweh is gracious.”

That wasn’t enough for Jewish leaders in John chapter 1. They wanted to know more because of what John was doing and how many people were seeking him for what he was doing.

John the Baptist had gotten their attention, so they wanted to know more.

John confessed (and didn’t deny) that he was not the Christ. Serious clarification there, huh? That wasn’t enough.

They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”

John said, “I’m not.”

“Are you the prophet?”

John answered, “No.”

They asked, “Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

John replied,“‘I am a voice crying out in the wilderness, Make the Lord’s path straight,’just as the prophet Isaiah said.”

Sometimes when we want clarification and details and transparency, what we really want is control.

In Genesis 32, when God and Jacob are wrestling, and Jacob won’t give up, God asks for his name. There was an understanding that knowing someone’s name could give you some power over them.

We want to know names, and we want answers – often because we, too, think that knowing gives us control.

In the early days of social media and internet gaming and chat rooms, almost no one used their real name. Many of us still have email addresses that hide our actual identity.

We want to know, and to control, and we don’t want others to know too much, or to control us.

Too much desire for knowledge and control, though, leads to desperation.

Especially in this information age, we can never know enough or control enough to guarantee our own safety or security. Focussing too much doing so leaves one feeling nothing but desperate.

This is not the time of year when anyone wants to feel desperate, but, can we admit, we do?

I tend to feel desperate when, usually on December 23rd or so, I realize that the shopping I have to do isn’t just going to happen. I have to do something!

And, full disclosure, Rachel takes responsibility for almost all of “our” christmas shopping. All that’s left for me to do is “my” christmas shopping.

And I have been slow to learn that it won’t just happen. I have to decide to make it happen, and then I have to act.let

So, I don’t know how desperate you feel right now, but I want to offer you an alternative for the day.

This won’t take care of the shopping you have left to do, but it will help you face it.

For right now, give up a little need for knowledge and control. If you need knowledge, get out your Advent book and open to today’s order. There’s the song order.

That’s all you’ll need. Other than that, receive it. Accept it. Let being here replace your frustration. Let the immediate, the now, the right here, the presence of God, melt your desperation away.

Because what we really want is for you to receive this cantata. Receive it, accept it. Now.

Jesus warned us (in the Sermon on the Mount) not to borrow worry. Not about tomorrow, our about clothing, or food, or any of the other issues that tempt us to desperation.

Words cannot grasp or define or limit God, though we may try. So let them go.

Trade the desperate for the Immediate. And receive our choir’s cantata. Let it bless you, and bring you into the very presence of God!

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I just finished my first read of Adam Alter’s Irresistible. I clarified “my first read” because I am going to start it again today. I social media-ed that “I can’t put it down,” partly for the irony, partly because I really enjoyed the read.

We are, most of us, addicted to technology that didn’t exist at the turn of the century. If we aren’t addicted, we have certainly learned to rely heavily upon it.

Case in point: I tried the other day to remember how I got directions and found places before google maps and gps technology.

All I could think of was Mapquest. Mapping and printing out maps and carrying them with me.

Alter doesn’t spend much time on using our phones to find our next lunch stop. Rather, he digs into why we are so addictable and how high tech and low tech companies keep us hooked.

His thesis relies on behavioral addiction being analogous to substance addiction, and, while you might not buy this link, I do.

After all, I have a fitbit, and have had one since 2012.

That’s when I joined the health care plan I have currently, so that’s when I became eligible to earn rewards for reaching or achieving certain activity levels. Since then, I can assure you, I have averaged a little more than 12,000 steps per day. My resting heart-rate, since I “upgraded” to a tracker that monitors my pulse, has averaged 59 this year.

Alter suggests that fitness trackers lead us to place our emphasis in the wrong place. We walk (or run) for the sake of the counter, rather than for health.

I had to admit this morning there may be some truth to this contention.

I’ve been a runner for at least 7 years. That’s when I became a father again at age 46, and committed to being a vital 64 and 66 when my 2 younger kids graduate.

But I achieved the final level of reward that my health plan offers during the first week of December.

And I haven’t run very much since then. I’ve been lacking the motivation.

When I started, good health was all the motivation I needed. It seems the opportunity for cash rewards (and, honestly, not all that much cash) has blurred that original vision.

I am going to keep wearing my fitbit – it serves as my watch, after all! – but I think my motivation needs a bit of

RECALCULATING

How’s your motivation? Are you distracted by technology, or have you found ways to keep it’s addictive nature in check? If you have developed practices to integrate tech into your life but not let it run you, please let me know, and share them. Because this confrontation isn’t going to get any easier!

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In the face of all the many disagreements, and further, in the face of what seems to be a lack of ability to communicate in civil and well-intentioned ways, I thought this morning of these words from Isaiah 55:8-9

Do you suppose that when God says, in Isaiah 55, that God’s thoughts and ways are not ours, God is referring to everyone? I have to admit that my usual first read of that passage is that God is referring to my enemy/opponent/anyone who disagrees with me.

To be fair, though, I have to admit, though it sometimes takes me a while, that God is, in fact, saying this to ALL of us.

(FULL DISCLOSURE: I do not have a second thought on my agenda for which this is the setup. Not that I never operate that way, but I am not this time)

That’s when “new coke” was released. The Coca-Cola company chose to change the 99 year old recipe concocted by Dr. John Pemberton.

It was a disaster. Or was it?

The company promised it would keep the newer formulation. Their research had determined younger generations would like it better.

New generations didn’t. New Coke went away. Thousands of calls and letters later, Old Coke, or regular Coke, or, as you may remember it, “Coke Classic” reappeared in July.

On June 14, 1999, New Coke made Time magazine’s “100 worst ideas of the 20th century.” Glenwood Davis, marketing manager for Coca-Cola in Roanoke, Va, recalled receiving a letter from a woman who wrote:”There are only two things in my life: God and Coca-cola. Now you have taken one of those things away from me.”

That’s serious stuff.

But was it really a disaster? Coke increased sales that year by 8% – twice their target. “New Coke,” of course, gave us “Classic Coke,” or the same old coke people had been drinking for 99 years, but now, somehow, it was new again.

Jesus was, in many respects, the same old message of God’s desire to redeem creation and reconcile the world to himself, but now, in Jesus, it was somehow new again. In Jesus, God’s people were confronted with a rollout of a seemingly new product. The point was, I am convinced, to restore or renew the message God had been about since the beginning of time.

I am not saying Jesus was New Coke. I am also not saying Jesus was Coke Classic.

It’s hard for us to put such terms on Jesus; I’ll grant you that. Even “Jesus as CEO” or “Jesus as marketing guru” or “Sales Genius” catch us wrong.

But what about Jesus as shepherd? Or the master farmer, Prophet, Priest, or King? Sure, you can imagine those images “fitting” Jesus. Jesus told stories about shepherds and farmers, prophets, priests, and kings. Jesus told stories about widows and rich men and merchants, too.

Jesus told the stories he told to reach the people he was talking to. Jesus didn’t tell farmer stories and use agricultural metaphors for the Kingdom of God because farmers are closer to the earth, or because that way of life was more primitive or less advanced and therefore better or preferred by God.

Jesus taught the way he taught, and used the stories, illustrations, and metaphors he used because these were precisely the stories, illustrations, and metaphors that would reach his audience.

How is the world today the same as it was in Jesus’ day? How is it different?

You aren’t a farmer. You aren’t a shepherd. You aren’t a prophet, priest or king. Some of you are merchants.

You are a consumer. You are a shopper. This is the world we live in. I have become convinced recently that these are the kinds of stories, illustrations, and metaphors that might reach us today the way Jesus’ stories, illustrations, and metaphors reached his audience.

Hence this sermon series: Branded. For the next five weeks (today and four more Sundays), we will be looking at the truth in God’s Word generally and the life and teachings of Jesus specifically through the same lens we view all the world, all our lives through.

So, an honest reflection. I had been pastor here no more than a month when I had a conversation with another staff member. She said something buying or selling – I honestly can’t remember now. I responded with something like, “You know, as followers of Jesus, we are not just consumers!”

She might have called me “hippie.” Or socialist, or communist, I don’t know. But she did say, “You aren’t going to try to tell me Jesus doesn’t want us to be consumers, are you?”

I replied, quickly, easily, and calmly: “No; that’s not what I’m saying. But I am saying this – our most basic identity as human beings is NOT that we buy stuff or consume stuff. Our most basic identity as human beings is that we are children of God – that God created us in God’s own image for fellowship with God, to live in relationship with God, and to be stewards over God’s creation.”

We are consumers; but we are first and foremost children of God who have lost our way and wandered from our identity as God’s children.

In Jesus’ day, the people were farmers and fishermen and shepherds and merchants. But they were first and foremost children of God who had lost their way and wandered from their identity as God’s children.

So, for the next 5 weeks, I hope you’ll stick with us for Branded!

Now, back to Coke.

How did Coca-cola get to New Coke from the pinnacle they had reached in 1971? I don’t know if 1971 was a peak of sales for Coke, but their brand hit a high point.

I want to make sure you get this: branding isn’t the image or logo. Branding is the story that the image or logo or song or video evoke. The image exists to connect us with a story. The image doesn’t work if it doesn’t connect us with a story.

Because we are story driven. Everything about us wants to be part of a story. We will even settle for being a bit-part in a story someone else wrote rather than not being in any story at all. We have even settled for the story that we get to make up our own story as we go along.

What story drives your life? Is it a story you made up, or one someone else made up? Is it the story God is telling?

Well, I’ve got good news for you this morning. There is a brand we all share. There is a story we all share, and it is tied to an image. Let’s start with the image. Look at the person next to you. Now the person on the other side of you.

THIS is the meaning of Genesis 1:27

God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them.

No really. This is the exact meaning of that passage! Back in the day when Genesis was written, it was not so easy to rule a large area as it is today. There was, you know, no internet, no telephone, no highway. A ruler could, of course, just raise a huge army and station troops everywhere, but a ruler who desired his subjects to live in peace would know that living under the constant watch of a soldier doesn’t inspire peace or favor. So a ruler’s power was stronger closer to home than far away. So a kingdom’s boundaries might be a hundred miles from the throne or capital city, but the king’s power dissipated with distance.

So, yes, the king could post troops, and kings did. But they also developed another practice. After all, they wanted their subject to know not only that they were under the king’s authority, but also under the king’s protection – in an extended sense, part of the King’s family. So, in addition to troops, the king would have statues – probably busts – chest up – of himself made and spread throughout the land. Thus, whenever anyone of the king’s subjects saw a bust of the king, they would be reminded that there was a king, and who the king was. The word for that was “image.”

The image of the king was placed throughout the kingdom as a reminder of who the King was.

We have been placed throughout the earth in the image of God, our Creator, as reminders that there is a King, and of who the King is.

Now, to know and understand, or even begin to understand, who this King is, required more than an image. It requires a story.

Thus the brand that we all share.

There is a story – God’s story – that is bigger than your story or my story. In fact, God’s story is big enough to contain your story and my story.

God’s story is so big that it really cannot be contained. For instance, look at today’s gospel reading. They were trying to catch Jesus in a trap – make him choose between God and Caesar, or between God and government. “Does the Law allow people to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Now, of course, by ‘Law,’ they meant the Law of Moses – God’s law.

You know how Jesus responded, “Show me a coin. Whose image and inscription does it have?”

Caesar’s. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God (say it with me) what is God’s.

So, what is Caesar’s? What is God’s?

It seems simple: Caesar’s image is on the coin, so God’s people are to pay taxes. But wait – Caesar’s image also bears the image of God!

So, yes, God’s people are to pay taxes, but even here we encounter God’s story – the brand we all share!

Upon reflection, though, we sometimes live our lives more like the New Coke part of the story than the 1971 “I want to teach the world to sing” ad part of the story.

This brand that we all share – you, and me and Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and Hitler and Osama Bin Laden, every Syrian refugee, that homeless guy with whom you avoided eye contact, and that person who cut you off in traffic last Friday.

By the way, the instant you were cut off in traffic, before you saw the driver, what did you make up about who it was? A woman? An elderly person? A foreigner? A kid who just got their learner’s permit? A pastor late to a funeral?

Yes, that person, and whatever stereotype you might have had of that person bears the image of God, and that image invites you to a story.

This story is bigger than your story or my story or our stories put together. It is bigger than the story of Texas or of the United States. It is bigger than the story of Methodism or Christianity.

This story is God’s story. It is told in the Bible, and it carries on today. God’s story is this: God created – us in God’s own image, for fellowship and to steward, manage, look after, care for, all of this grand and glorious creation. That’s act 1. Act 2 isn’t as pretty: we took all the good God had to offer and said, “uh, thanks, God, but we’ll try our own thing.” We are still living Act 2 today, but we’ve also moved through Acts 3 and 4. Act 3 is Israel. God’s response to Act 2 is to raise up a people – first in Abraham, then in his family, then, of course, through Moses’ leadership the whole nation of people Abraham’s children had become. In Act 3 God blesses God’s people that they, in turn, might bless the rest of the world and draw them all back to their Creator.

Act 4 is Jesus. Through generations Israel failed to live up to it’s calling. (Dont’ be hard on Israel for this until you have succeeded in living up to God’s calling on your life!)

Act 5 is the church. Now. You and me. This is our part of the story that begins with creation. You and I are living in this part of the story. We can help write this part of the story! We are invited to be a part of the story that includes God’s Kingdom becoming more and more real and more and more present here and now.

If we live the story. If we accept the brand that we all share.

New Coke didn’t fit the brand, the story, that Coke had spent a century developing and telling. People didn’t buy the story that New Coke was telling.

What story is your life telling? Is your life telling the story of creation and fall? Is your life telling the story of God working in and through people – Abrahama, the people of Israel, Jesus, and the Church, to redeem, restore, renew creation? Is your life telling the story of the brand that God has placed in all of us – the very image of God our Creator? Is your life telling God’s story?

Some of our lives tell the story that God loves some of us, but not all of us. Some of our lives tell the story that God loves us if we do enough to earn it. Some of our lives tell the story that God used to love us, but then we sinned – we divorced, we cheated someone, we talked back to our parents, we emotionally abused our spouse, we cut people off in traffic.

But at least I haven’t robbed a bank or committed murder. So we tell the story of God loving everyone except bank robbers and murders.

You and I pervert God’s story in all sorts of ways – some big, some small. But if you or I tell others – or ourselves – a story that denies or takes away from God’s gracious offer of love and life, a story that ignores or denies the transformative power of God’s love, they we are perverting God’s story.

We pervert the story when we try to trick Jesus, like they did in today’s reading from Luke 20, into choosing God or community. We all tarnish the brand we all share.

New Coke offers a closing illustration of how we tarnish the brand we all share. There is pretty large consensus that the main motivation behind new Coke was the Pepsi Challenge. Beginning as far back as 1975 – 10 years before New Coke – Pepsi launched the Pepsi Challenge. The Pepsi Challenge was a blind taste test between, basically, a swallow of pepsi and a swallow of coke. These samples were, typically, served at room temperature. (what do they think we are, eurpeans?)

The bigger picture, of course, tells a different story. It turns out that even if people like Pepsi, the sweeter of the two if all they have is a sip, many of them still prefer the less-sweet taste of Coke if they are drinking more than a sip.

One of our main failures as a church is that we have been offering sips of life with Christ, which we present as pretty sweet, while we’ve been ignoring, or denying, the long-term benefits of following Jesus.

And I’m not talking about going to heaven. I’m talking about the brand we all share – learning to live with the constant reminder of who this God is who made us in God’s very image.

So if your version of Christianity is a sip test – take a little now and maybe a little every Sunday, then you’ve got the New Coke version. That’s a brand no one else wants to buy.

But here’s the version of Christiainity that is faithful to the brand – to God’s story of creation and redemption and healing and learning to live in the presence of God.

Everytime you see a person, remember this. Because this is the brand we all share.